open(2) - perldoc - phpman

NAME
    open - perl pragma to set default PerlIO layers for input and output

SYNOPSIS
        use open IN  => ':crlf', OUT => ':raw';
        open my $in, '<', 'foo.txt' or die "open failed: $!";
        my $line = <$in>; # CRLF translated
        close $in;
        open my $out, '>', 'bar.txt' or die "open failed: $!";
        print $out $line; # no translation of bytes
        close $out;

        use open OUT => ':encoding(UTF-8)';
        use open IN  => ':encoding(iso-8859-7)';

        use open IO  => ':locale';

        # IO implicit only for :utf8, :encoding, :locale
        use open ':encoding(UTF-8)';
        use open ':encoding(iso-8859-7)';
        use open ':locale';

        # with :std, also affect global standard handles
        use open ':std', ':encoding(UTF-8)';
        use open ':std', OUT => ':encoding(cp1252)';
        use open ':std', IO => ':raw :encoding(UTF-16LE)';

DESCRIPTION
    Full-fledged support for I/O layers is now implemented provided Perl is configured to use PerlIO
    as its IO system (which has been the default since 5.8, and the only supported configuration
    since 5.16).

    The "open" pragma serves as one of the interfaces to declare default "layers" (previously known
    as "disciplines") for all I/O. Any open(), readpipe() (aka qx//) and similar operators found
    within the lexical scope of this pragma will use the declared defaults via the "${^OPEN}"
    variable.

    Layers are specified with a leading colon by convention. You can specify a stack of multiple
    layers as a space-separated string. See PerlIO for more information on the available layers.

    With the "IN" subpragma you can declare the default layers of input streams, and with the "OUT"
    subpragma you can declare the default layers of output streams. With the "IO" subpragma (may be
    omitted for ":utf8", ":locale", or ":encoding") you can control both input and output streams
    simultaneously.

    When open() is given an explicit list of layers (with the three-arg syntax), they override the
    list declared using this pragma. open() can also be given a single colon (:) for a layer name,
    to override this pragma and use the default as detailed in "Defaults and how to override them"
    in PerlIO.

    To translate from and to an arbitrary text encoding, use the ":encoding" layer. The matching of
    encoding names in ":encoding" is loose: case does not matter, and many encodings have several
    aliases. See Encode::Supported for details and the list of supported locales.

    If you want to set your encoding layers based on your locale environment variables, you can use
    the ":locale" pseudo-layer. For example:

        $ENV{LANG} = 'ru_RU.KOI8-R';
        # the :locale will probe the locale environment variables like LANG
        use open OUT => ':locale';
        open(my $out, '>', 'koi8') or die "open failed: $!";
        print $out chr(0x430); # CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A = KOI8-R 0xc1
        close $out;
        open(my $in, '<', 'koi8') or die "open failed: $!";
        printf "%#x\n", ord(<$in>); # this should print 0xc1
        close $in;

    The logic of ":locale" is described in full in "The ":locale" sub-pragma" in encoding, but in
    short it is first trying nl_langinfo(CODESET) and then guessing from the LC_ALL and LANG locale
    environment variables. ":locale" also implicitly turns on ":std".

    ":std" is not a layer but an additional subpragma. When specified in the import list, it
    activates an additional functionality of pushing the layers selected for input/output handles to
    the standard filehandles (STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR). If the new layers and existing layer stack
    both end with an ":encoding" layer, the existing ":encoding" layer will also be removed.

    For example, if both input and out are chosen to be ":encoding(UTF-8)", a ":std" will mean that
    STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR will also have ":encoding(UTF-8)" set. On the other hand, if only
    output is chosen to be in ":encoding(koi8r)", a ":std" will cause only the STDOUT and STDERR to
    be in "koi8r".

    The effect of ":std" is not lexical as it modifies the layer stack of the global handles. If you
    wish to apply only this global effect and not the effect on handles that are opened in that
    scope, you can isolate the call to this pragma in its own lexical scope.

        { use open ':std', IO => ':encoding(UTF-8)' }

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
    There is a class method in "PerlIO::Layer" "find" which is implemented as XS code. It is called
    by "import" to validate the layers:

       PerlIO::Layer::->find("perlio")

    The return value (if defined) is a Perl object, of class "PerlIO::Layer" which is created by the
    C code in perlio.c. As yet there is nothing useful you can do with the object at the perl level.

SEE ALSO
    "binmode" in perlfunc, "open" in perlfunc, perlunicode, PerlIO, encoding